IBM Professor Latest Wall of COOL Addition

Cal Poly Pomona’s Wall of COOL celebrates exemplary technology-infused and enhanced course development by faculty and a College of Business Administration professor is about to become an inductee.

L. Lin Ong, Ph.D. with the International Business and Marketing Management department asked students in two sections of IBM 300: Principles of Global Business to interact with peers and industry on a global level using the program X-Culture.

“Dr. Lin Ong’s course selected because of an emphasis on learn-by-doing,” director of the Faculty Center for Professional Development and the eLearning team Victoria Bhavsar, Ph.D. said. “In this case using the X-Culture platform to facilitate students’ interaction with global classmates.  The review committee frankly thought that this is darn cool!”

Ong said she integrated an exciting international team-based consulting opportunity, X-Culture, into a traditional face-to-face lecture format. Careful planning allowed for students to experience the highs and lows of working on a globally distributed team on a real-world business project, while including in-person learning opportunities and support systems. 

Out of 4972 students participating in X-Culture, the Broncos were represented in six of the top 19 undergraduate teams. By their distinction in the top 2.8 percent of participants, they will be invited to participate in the X-Culture Global Symposium, a selective conference offered only to top students including an additional business plan competition, meetings with entrepreneurs, academics, and business leaders, as well as scholarly presentations and panels.

“Honestly, while I am incredibly excited for the Wall of COOL award, I am even prouder that our students excelled in such a clear way,” Ong said. “Working with international teams can be a frustrating experience, and having such a tangible recognition of our CPP students’ excellence in action is incredibly satisfying.”

Presentations from this year’s Wall of COOL faculty will commence April 13-14 during the campus CSU Symposium/Polyteach joint event.

Dr. L. Lin Ong, Goals for IBM 300

As someone with professional international business experience, I had several teaching goals:

1)Give students professional, international exposure: by facilitating students’ interaction with global classmates in a controlled setting, students gain skills for professionalism, job-market skills, as well as discussion points for interviews.

2)Provide tools for professional collaboration: the focus of the teamwork was using technology practically to support their work/learning. By discussing synchronous vs. asynchronous communication, reviewing many commonly used (and free) applications for sharing information, and also putting our data-driven work in context, students learned to appreciate and better understand the technology they often take for granted.

3)Create networks of in-person support: I did not want students to lose the opportunity for in-person support networks, so multiple in-class breakout sessions were strategically scheduled to allow for informal presentations, questions about clients, idea feedback, or even group dynamic/cultural issue support.

4)Integrate this into the overall course: care was given for this to be a smooth part of the overall course design, including focusing on student accessibility and integration into an easy-to-navigate Blackboard site.